Notes on: Lenz Taguchi, H (2012) A
diffractive and Deleuzian approach to analysing
interview data. Feminist Theory 13(3)
265--81. DOI: 10.1177/1464700112456001
Dave Harris
We are going to consider the co-constitution of
matter and meaning, as in Barad, through a
diffractive analysis of interview data with a
six-year-old boy. Diffractive analysis is 'an
embodied engagement with the materiality of
research data: a becoming–with the data as
researcher… transcorporeal engagements with data'.
This concept is diffracted with Deleuze and
Guattari on becoming
minor we are going beyond mere reflexivity
and interpretation seen as 'inner mental
activities taking place in the mind of the
researcher… separated from the data' we intend to
make visible 'new kinds of material–discursive
realities' that will have political consequences
(265).
Feminists have always argued that bodies and
material realities are 'discursively constituted,
but this has not been related to matter and its
constitutive role and agency, especially in
"feminist de/constructionism"' (266) As a result,
the relations between gender and biological sex
have been problematic, until we understood
gender/sex 'is a mixed and entangled cultural –
natural phenomenon'. Haraway's cyborg has helped
here. The body's agency has been explored,
especially examining 'bodily and transcorporeal
materialities' which will avoid either biological
determinism or cultural essentialism. Someone
called Lykke has proposed that we call this 'post
constructionism' although no dichotomy is implied
with earlier work — feminists must acknowledge the
continuities with earlier theories such as Marxism
psychoanalysis and post structuralism, but 'the
sexed body and pre-discursive factor cities of
materiality' can now be brought back. Barad is important
here for explaining how discursive practices and
material phenomena are co-constitutive.
The new problem of addressing the real has led to
new thoughts about research. Feminists can now
'read the data from our own bodies as researchers'
(267), and more generally address the agency of
bodies and how it is articulated in the data. This
should include nonhuman bodies, although they
could be understood as minoritarian material
bodies as in Deleuze and Guattari. This would help
them escape majoritarian conceptions and habits,
disrupt hierarchical thinking, and destabilise
dichotomies. Deleuze
1994 says that we should use all our body
faculties to do this [so we are eliding together
quite a few deleuzian bits and pieces]. In
particular we need 'our bodymind' to extend
knowing into other realities and responsibly
engage in shaping the future.
Diffractive analysis on interview data will show
the possibilities of considering 'the agency of
the material in the production of knowledge'. She
wants to add to Barad on material-discursive
intra-activity with the concept of the
transcorporeal [Alaiamo --?] and becoming
minoritarian. We become minoritarian with the
data, paying attention to 'body mind faculties'
that register smell, temperature, pressure tension
[and other affects -- all assumed to be equally
relevant in some way?]. We use these as well as
the mind, and this means a new way of thinking,
beyond reflexivity and interpretation 'as inner
mental activities'. We seek other realities
'presented in the data: a real beyond those
produced by processes of recognition and
identification'.
In this we are reading texts from different
traditions diffractively [citing Barad herself and
also Jackson and Mazzei!]. Feminists and Deleuze
understand this is how to theorise and do
philosophy. We need to avoid asking what does it
mean and ask instead how does it work, as Deleuze
notes in his letter
to a harsh critic. Plugging in Deleuze, Barad and
feminists has led to new ways of theorising and
doing research.
First we plug deleuzian texts into Barad. Barad
criticises the notion of reflection as mirroring
of essential positions rather than processing
differences. Only a few people have tried to use
the approach in feminist work [including herself,
Palmer, Jackson and Mazzei]. This research sees
discourse and matter is mutually constituted and
knowing as 'a flow of continuous differentiation'
(268). We can grasp this by exploring feminist
standpoint epistemology first, especially
'multiple standpoint analysis' (269) [Lykke
again].
We have to recognise the 'situatedness of the
Knower' if we are to avoid a godlike position in
positivist empiricism [so says Haraway — another
silly binary?]. The usual position [straw
man] is that data are a passive matter and
researchers are ontologically separated:
interpretation and analysis involves a self
reflexive mental process of naming, structuring
and representing. In interviews in particular,
'"voice makes present the truth"' [quoting Mazzei
and Jackson this time] reflects the meaning of an
experience. Voice shows the presence of
consciousness. Narration is a desire to 'recover a
lost origin or truthful discourse'. Interpretation
involves trying to work out what the interviewee
really means, making sense, and seeing the subject
of research as the source of meaning.
Interpretation is made coherent and interesting by
'themes and patterns understood to emerge from the
data'.
So interpretation reflects sameness or manageable
differences — 'from something previously
identified and acknowledged' such as a subject
position identity or category. Examples are 'woman
as different from man' or different classes. We
can cite Deleuze to
argue that this sort of difference is a difference
from, 'a construct of the negative', not
difference as positive — 'an effective connections
and relations within and between different bodies,
affecting and being affected by each other'. This
sort of positive difference involves
multiplicities in becoming or in differentiating
themselves — it is 'like life itself'. Braidotti's
take is to argue to move away from the logic of
negativity in Marxist dialectics of consciousness
and in psychoanalysis. The negative approach
implies 'corresponding conditions of resistance'
or counteraction — marginality, injury,
oppression. This stopped us understanding reality
as 'the processing of differences with various
material effects' as Barad suggests. Identifying
categories, identities and positions also risks
'fixing and confirming them' (270).
Jackson and Mazzei offer instead 'a methodology
against interpretivism' [in another book]. To
oppose the centring of traditional qualitative
research with its assumption that the interviewee
is voicing coherent narratives and representing
the self. In feminist research in particular, any
sign of heterogeneity or contradiction is
interpreted as meaning an effect of women as a
group or class. At the same time, the oppressed
have '"epistemic privilege"'. Human voices and
interpersonal interactions are at the centre —
'anthropocentrism' which ignores matter and
materiality [citing Haraway but also Law].
Instead, interview data should demonstrate the
limitations of research analysis, data as partial
or incomplete, and a story as in place of another
possible story. Analysis can also open up data,
diffract it and imagine new results [still J and
M].
We can connect this back to diffraction in Barad
and Haraway, which offers superposition [of waves
though] or interference, like the transformation
of waves in the sea. Waves can intra-act with an
obstacle and bend and spread, although the
original wave 'partly remains within the new'. As
a methodology, this means we have to study how
differences get made in process and what effects
they have, what is excluded.
This involves rethinking ontology. Bodies are no
longer separate entities with distinct borders,
but are entangled and interdependent,
co-constitutive, coexisting. This covers nonhuman
bodies as well. Co-constitution and entanglement
cannot be studied as effectively by reflexive
methodology. When we do this, we engage our bodies
and interfere with the data 'in a process of
transcorporeality' (271). We are developing what
Barad calls onto – epistemology, derived from
Bohr, where we are studying '"practices of knowing
in being"'. This 'goes for any material body — a
stone or a fruit — when making itself intelligible
to our bodyminds' as we might eat it. Our body is
also making itself intelligible to the material.
This is 'material – discursive intra-activity'. It
is not the same as interactivity, which refers to
a relationship between separate entities,
including interpersonal relationships between two
humans [binary again]. Implies that there are no
clear boundaries but that bodies are affecting or
being affected 'in an interdependent and mutual
relationship as a condition for their existence'.
Apparently, this 'brings to feminist research' the
necessary recognition of the agency of material
bodies, instead of just regarding them as 'passive
tools'.
For Deleuze, to reflect means to interconnect with
something [doesn't this contradict what we just
argued?]. We are forced to think in fundamental
encounters with objects. This is not recognition
involves representations. Those construct
'distinct differences between objects and
identities to constitute dichotomised oppositions
and hierarchies of values' (272). Instead we need
to think diffract if the, think of interference
and overlapping and positive differences, reading
and 'becoming with… The data' not separating
ourselves from it. In this way 'the data is itself
understood as a co-constitutive force'. All our
faculties are needed to think like this, D and G argue.
Analysis as an event becomes 'a transcorporeal
engagement' where all the senses are required. We
have to try to see how data interferes with our
sensibilities. This links to becoming-minoritarian
[which might be one productive aspect of
diffraction], and we can escape from taken for
granted normalised thinking. Becoming minoritarian
is about thinking otherwise. It means 'embodied
involvement, transformation and the capacity to
change that make a diffractive methodology both
feminist and political'.
On to the data. It was a pilot study collected by
somebody else for a PhD, concerning the
construction of how to become a successful school
pupil. There was discursive analysis of data that
included 'curricula [sic] texts… Conversations (as
opposed to formal interviewing) arising from
conversations led by the researcher with six
groups of 2 to 4 nine-year-olds. The researcher
tried to be different from the teacher, and the
kids were to tell narratives about becoming a
school pupil 'focusing on "expression of power and
control, mastering your body and controlling your
feelings, praise and appreciation, managing
oneself and being nice, friends and games,
decision-making, making mistakes, uncertainty
about rules, punishment, force, challenging the
discourse, significance of gender and rules"'
(273) [pretty extensive agenda]. This data was
brought to a workshop on deconstructive
methodologies. [Very lazy way to gather data, and
it is at least second-hand]
We have field notes written by the interviewer
describing the context first. The boy [Eric] has
some kind of special needs: [lengthy account
ensues about what the kids did, what the
interviewer expects to find, and the early opening
gambits with Eric, leading to description of what
they did yesterday, making toy boats. The
interviewer thinks Eric has a good relationship
with the kids but 'has difficulties in
handling his subjectivity as a good schoolboy,
which is what is expected of him in school' (274).
Eric is not sure whether to treat his supporter as
a friend.
LT wants to respond to the challenge of J and M to
open up this data and read it diffractively. She
wants to 'open up my bodymind faculties to
experience the entanglement of discourse and
matter'in this event, and note the
'material–discursive intra-actions' taking place.
Her readings intend to disclose another reality
'from the thickness and intense multiplicity of
intra-activities that any event constitutes'.
There is no claim to be uncovering essence or
truth, but merely 'a reality that already
exists among the multiple realities being enacted
in an event, but which has not been previously
"disclosed"' (274 – 5) [so any poetic reading will
do then?]
First she notices how tables and chairs 'an act or
space of interviewing' and 'an event of sitting'
involving formal talk. The table separates and
distances the participants, that is 'agential
enact[s] distance formality and seriousness' as
does the 'performed talking'. This space becomes
part of a more general one in schooling where
performances are judged by things like good or bad
sitting. The adult asks a question first, a form
of discursive determination. The unexpected
presence of another adult affects the
intra-actions, 'causing new differences that evoke
in me (and perhaps Eric) and even stronger feeling
of vulnerability', and this might be deepened by
the presence of any adult body, interviewer or
teacher. It is hard to disentangle the effects of
many other event of talking involving a child and
adult in school.
After thinking of becoming-with-Eric and
becoming-minoritarian, however, she can argue that
'a reality of this event is that there actually
was no interview', at least not a benevolent one
to find out about children. Instead, the whole
situation was 'saturated with material–discursive
conditions that compose virtually all kinds of
talking initiated by adults enactments', including
assessing and judging the children.
She then engages in 'the transcorporeal act of
reading the data when making myself aware of my
imaginary and bodymind sensibilities'. She now can
'sense [oh no] the intensity of eagerness and
anticipation' when Eric played with the boat. As
the boat sailed and then turned over, 'Eric is
drawn into a new event, the funeral of the boat
and skipper' and this is 'enacted' by a girl who
throws flowers onto the water: 'one event unfolds
and overlaps into the next; involving the
entanglements of the children's bodies, their
words and imagination, the bark boat and the
running water of the stream' (276).
In this becoming minoritarian, we can invoke
another reality, not the one recorded in the
interviewer notes, which contain codes of
expectations of Eric's emotional struggles or
social difficulties or feelings. She, by contrast,
does not anticipate or expect the need for Eric to
be on guard with himself or having to overcome
problems. Instead she sees 'an event where it is
possible to become–with–Eric as taking part in an
exciting adventure of interest – activities, where
all the performative agents differentiate in
relation to themselves as the events unfold' [in
other words she reinterprets what Eric tells the
interviewer about the play with the boat] this is
to be understood as 'a reality of success in
narration, creative imagination and intense
collaboration… Eric is no longer a child who is
lacking in social ability… He is successfully
intra-acting and collaborating with many
performative agents — and is making many new
friends' [she's imposed primary school ideology on
the poor lad to talk up a bit of play].
'I encounter the data in an event of
becoming–minoritarian' [she's trading off the
deleuzian notion of the event throughout, I
think]. This is an alternative to the
'majoritarian position of researcher as the sole
subject of knowledge production'. As she does
'becoming–with–the–bark–boat', she sees the data
as 'transformative passing from one state to
becoming to the other… A sensation in the zone of
indetermination'. She can install herself in the
data and imagine intra-activity, not only
'relationship of nonhierarchical entangled
intra–activities and co–dependencies between human
and non–human performative agents', but the very
weight and height of the boat. Her 'transcorporeal
imagining' has the participants calling out to
each other. She is affected, but this shows that
'thinking and imagining exceed data and ourselves
as researchers' (277) because, as D and G argue,
both subject and thinking are effects of forces
affecting and being affected. This diffractive
reading helps her disclose a reality 'that causes
me to differentiate in relation to myself — as in
a difference in itself as understood by Deleuze'.
So we have a different reality than we would get
from de/constructivist readings which confine
themselves to 'interpersonal discursive subject
positionings'. She is now understood how power
production in schools is a material discursive
intra-activity, involving 'several material
performative agents in an event'. She has
transformed understanding of the socially
competent child, by extending social competence
'to include collaborations with nonhuman or
more–than–human performative agents' [special need
kids are terribly good with toys and animals]. It
was knowledge produced or rather 'evoked in a
transcorporeal engagement with the data' and she
now understands herself differently as a socially
competent agent. There are also implications for
planning and performing pedagogical practices,
'relying more on understanding the force of
material artefacts as performative agents'.
'Reading in resistance to the normative' also
connects diffractive analysis to standpoint
feminisms. This is seen 'in the ability to make
real an event that can undermine the certainty of
those who claim to know how to understand who Eric
is… Based on dominant discourses in the context of
schooling'. The benefits arise from the 'different
ontological presuppositions of diffraction',
'knowing in being (onto–epistemology)' rather than
analysis based on ontological separation and
distance.
Eric can now be understood as both powerless and
powerful, 'depending on from what discursive
subject position we read the data'. Researchers
perform multiple readings often 'from a distance
and basically unaffected position from the data'.
The events are hidden behind multiple
interpretations, 'which in fact means that anyone
can "own" the reality of the event', or that
people with epistemic privilege can. In this way
interpretive and multiple discourse analysis
'merely produces socially constructed alternative
points of view, satisfying only for those who have
the power to "play" with alternatives'.
Material feminist readings, however 'aspire to
invoke other possible material realities that can
have political and material consequences' (278)
[so the only difference is they claim their
alternative interpretations as different
realities?]. We get to different realities after
foregrounding the material and allowing the real
back into the discussion '"without retreating to a
simpleminded empiricism"'. A different reality is
'not the reality, but a (potential) real'.
That we have done this 'constitutes a feminist
resistance and subversiveness', against
'foundational, anthropocentric and privileging
points of view'. We 'acknowledge our
interdependence and coexistence with other bodies
in the world'. We produce as knowledge 'a
material–discursive reality', with activity
extended to other bodies. We become aware of our
own embodiment in materiality of the event
(analysing data). Both diffractive analysis and
deleuzian approaches are about 'intervention and
invention; responsibility and ethics'. Any
feminist diffractor 'is committed to understanding
how we as researchers are responsibly engaged in
shaping the future for humans, nonhumans and the
material environment in our production of
knowledge': productions of knowledge 'also
productions of reality that will always have
specific material consequences'.
[So Barad is bolted onto a poetic and progressive
reading of an educational encounter. I'm not sure
D&G are that well grasped either. Because
Barad is involved, we can call this reading
another 'reality'. We also prefer this reality,
that is we are responsible for it, and we hope it
will transform things]
Additional notes focusing more on diffraction(s)
Taguchi extras
Alaimo and the trans-corporeal is 'put to work
diffractively with Deleuze and Guattari on
becoming minor or minorityarian'. (265 This
involves reconceptualising 'the very act of
thinking as a trans-corporeal process of
engagement, going beyond the idea of reflexivity
and interpretation as inner mental activities
taking place in the mind of the researcher
understood are separated from the data'. Overall
diffractive analysis makes visible 'new kinds of
material – discursive realities'
'Transcorporeality’
in the work of Alaimo (Kuznetski
2019) seems to be a kind of
ecologically-inflected intra-action:bodies are
affected by materialfactors likkethepollutants
in the environment
Kuznetski, T and Alaimo, S. (2019)
Transcoroporeality: An Interview With Stacy
Alaimo./ :
HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.37536/ECOZONA.2020.11.2.3478
Discourse needs to be 'mutually constituted with
matter' as well as with the body. Feminist D
constructionism still does not adequately
addressed 'the material real, including the agency
of matter'. (266) Gender is still problematic, but
it can be understood as 'a mixed and entangled
cultural natural phenomenon', gender/sex.
Materiality is: constitutive with discourse and
this is where Alaimo fits in with others.
Trans-corporeal materiality is not biological
determinism or cultural essentialism. Barad argues
neither material nor discursive practices are
prior, but are mutually articulated.
One problem is how to produce research from such
an ontology and epistemology. We want to 'do
research from the perspective of particular bodies
but… Also attempt to read the data from our own
bodies' (267). And consider nonhuman war more than
human bodies as well. We need to consider minor
material bodies who have escaped majoritarian
norms and subject positions and 'habits of mind
and practice': Deleuze says this needs another
kind of thinking 'using all our bodiily faculties
and our imaginary' [the reference here is Deleuze
1994, but I don't remember it there]. We can also
cite Merrell on the 'bodymind', and this is like
Barad on responsible engagement between humans
nonhumans and the material environment.
What she does here is 'experiment by performing a
diffractive analysis of the piece of interview
data with a six year old boy in a preschool class.
Inspired by [Haraway and Barad she] 'develop my
own take on a diffractive analysis' which also
'puts to work' Alaimo on the trans-corporeal and
Deleuze and Guattari on the process of becoming
minority Syrian. In the process she is 'attentive
to those body mind faculties that register smell,
touch, level, temperature, pressure, tension and
force in the interconnections… Between different
matter, matter and discourse, in the event of
engagement with data'. This forces us to rethink
'the very act of thinking' and to make matter
intelligible in new ways, 'to imagine other
possible realities… A real beyond those produced
by processes of recognition and identification in
reflexive interpretations'.
She knows that Barad and Deleuze emerge from
different academic traditions but she wants to
demonstrate 'the possibilities of reading texts
from different traditions diffractively' (268).
Both feminists and Deleuze already do this, by
focusing on questions like '"how does it work?"
And "what does this text or data produce?" [As in
Deleuze's letter to a harsh critic, which also
cites plugging into an electric circuit leading to
the dreaded application of plugging in to Deleuze
Barad and other feminist theorists'.
She is going to plugging some readings of Deleuze
and Guattari and Deleuze 'the productively overlap
with Barad's thinking… How to understand
difference, the act of thinking and the process of
becoming minority Syrian'.
[We then go on to criticise reflection and to
suggest diffraction as an alternative. She cites
the 'few published empirical studies claiming to
put it to work' which include her own work with
Hopman 2010, Jackson and Mazzei 2012 and Palmer
2011.. She understands research as 'where
discourse and matter are understood to be mutually
constituted in the production of knowing in a flow
of continuous differentiation' but wants to
illustrate these with a few more familiar
interpretive methodologies used in feminist
standpoint approaches.
Feminist standpoint theories involve reflecting on
the situated and is of the knower and separating
these interpretations from the data, traditionally
gained from interviewing. This assumes that the
voice or consciousness can recover lost origins
truthful discourses and interpretation is
representational [quoting Jackson and Mazzei
apparently], reflecting sameness or identifying
differences from something previously identified —
differences for men from different classes or
races. Deleuze says that here are differences
negative difference from but we need to focus on
differences positive and effective connections and
relations affecting and being affected. This is
'relational ontology' and 'like life itself: a
continuum multiplicity in a constant state of
becoming or differentiation' [with the page
reference 163] Braidottie agrees that feminism
needs to move away from negativity and lack, a
focus on oppression or injury and subsequent
resistance counteraction. Instead, reality needs
to be understood as 'a processing of differences'.
Jackson and Mazzei have outlined an alternative
'methodology – against – interpretivism' (270)
which disrupts the idea that the interviewee
voices coherent narratives that represent the
self, or that their knowledge mirrors the
situation for women as a group, that women or the
oppressed 'have "epistemic privilege"'. This is
anthropocentric and ignores 'the constitutive
force of matter and materiality'. Instead the
interview data should be used to show the
limitations of doing research analysis, regarded
as 'partial and incomplete' as eliminating other
possible stories, needing to be opened up,
diffracted [sic] and opened to newness.
If we link back to the work by Barad and Haraway,
diffraction is the result of superposition or
interference of waves, so 'diffraction us of
methodology then is about studying how differences
get made in such a process and the effects that
differences make: what is excluded and how these
differences and exclusions matter' [citing Barad
2007 30]' (271).
We need to move 'ontologically' as a result, not
identifying bodies are separate entities but
rather to think 'in terms of processes of
entanglements and interdependencies in processes
of an ongoing code constitutive coexistence of
different kinds of bodies (human as well as
nonhuman war more than human)' [citing Alaimo and
Barad]. Thinking diffractive means 'thinking is a
process of co-constitution, investigating the
entanglement of ideas and other materiality is'.
The 'body mind of the researcher in this process
is understood to engage and interfere with the
data in a process of trans corporeality'.
First we need to understand diffractive thinking
ontologically as an 'onto-epistemology' as in
Barad.: '"The study of practices of knowing in
being"' [citing Barad 2007 185], an
interdependence where '"knowing is a matter of
part of the world making itself intelligible to
another part of the world"' [185], and this
applies to any material body. This process of
making itself known is 'material – discursive
intra-activity'.
Intra-activity comes from physics and refers to
'relationships between multiple bodies (both human
and nonhuman) that are understood not to have
clear or distinct boundaries from one another:
rather they are always affecting or being affected
by each other in an interdependent and mutual
relationship as a condition for their existence'.
In feminist research this calls attention to the
agency of material bodies in the process of
activity rather than their passivity.
Deleuze says that to reflect means to interconnect
with something, that we are forced to think as the
result of a fundamental encounter, not just a
recognition [I do recognise this from Deleuze
1994]. Recognition leads to representation and
this leads to classic differences between objects
and identities, dichotomies and hierarchies of
values. Thinking diffractive three by contrast 'as
a process of interference and overlapping and
studying the effects of what Deleuze will
understand as positive differences'. It requires
'an event of reading and becoming with' [citing
Haraway 2008] the data'. The data is a 'code
constitutive force, working with and upon the
researcher'. We must activate wire embodied
faculties as Deleuze and Guattari argue [giving
the page references of 144 – 45]. The body mind of
the researcher 'becomes a space of transit in the
encounter with data', and the event of analysis
'thus becomes a trans-corporeal engagement… The
researchers attentive to those body mind faculties
that register… Smell… Touch, level, temperature,
pressure, tension and force'. We try to register
how the data interference with the sensibilities
of our body minds. 'This is where Deleuze and
Guattari's understanding of the process of
becoming minority Aryan in the event becomes a
productive aspect of diffractive analysis… 'A
process of escape from taken for granted
normalised thinking aimed at transformation and
change [page references here 272 – 91], thinking
otherwise away from norms, learning from new
encounters and engagements. Overall, a diffractive
methodology takes these aspects 'with embodied
involvement, transformation and the capacity for
change' and this is what makes it 'both feminist
and political' (272).
[Then we get onto the data]. How to open it up and
diffract her analysis? She wants to read with the
data and understand it 'as a constitutive force'.
She opens up her body mind faculties to experience
'the entanglement of discourse and matter' and
processes the effects of difference. She hopes
that her readings will '"disclose" and other
reality from the thickness and dense multiplicity
of intra-activities that any event constitutes'.
She is not seeking essence all truth but a reality
that already exists but is not been disclosed
(275).
First she installs herself in the space to
appreciate the effects of the table and chairs and
sitting, or how the 'table can be felt to agential
a enact distance, formality and seriousness
together with the adults material – discursive
performed talking': it does not 'provide a space
that permits relaxation, confidentiality or
integrity'; it evokes 'an even stronger feeling of
vulnerability'. There actually was no interview,
but rather adult talk and monitoring.
Now she senses the 'intensity of eagerness in
anticipation' when Eric actually starts to play,
and this evokes 'another reality' Eric is not
competing with the other children normal having
problems overcoming any setbacks. It is not on
guard's and master's feelings but instead taking
part in an 'adventure of intra-activities world
the performative agents differentiate in relation
to themselves'.
She describes becoming with the bark as a
'transformative passing from one state of becoming
to the other… A sensation in the zone been
determination' which helps her imagine
intra-activity between the boys about the water, a
'trans-corporeal imagining' (276) what emerges is
'an effect of being affected, where thinking and
imagining exceed data and ourselves as researcher…
A disclosure other reality that causes me to
differentiate in rail relation to myself — as a
difference in itself is understood by Deleuze
(1994:28)' (277).
This diffractive analysis has transformed her
understanding of how power production is a
material discursive intra-activity involving
'several material performative agents. She is also
change the way she understands herself as a
socially competent agent. She now sees
possibilities for planning pedagogical practice
'relying more on understanding the force of
material artefacts as performative agents'. She
can now challenge dominant understandings of
understanding who Eric is.
This contrasts with critical D constructivist
readings which would depict Eric is powerless and
powerful, readings offered from a distance,
unaffected by the data. In standpoint feminism,
only those who have episteme it privilege could
really grasp of the reality of the event. Material
feminist readings would invoke other possible
material realities, in order to produce 'feminist
resistance and subversiveness'. Diffractive
analysis 'makes us aware of our embodied
involvement in the materiality of the event of
analysing data… [It [… Is simultaneously about
intervention and invention; responsibility and
ethics', responsible engagement in shaping the
future. (278).
[Note refers to various people who have seen links
between feminist theory and Deleuze including
Braidottie and Grosz, while those combining
Deleuze with Barad include Lenz Taguchi 2910b,
Hultman and Lenz Taguchi 2010, Hird 2003]
Jackson and Matt Xi (2012) thinking with theory
and qualitative research: viewing data across
multiple perspectives. London: Routledge
Lenz Taguchi H (2010) going beyond the
theory/practice dividing early childhood
education: introducing an interactive pedagogy
Lenz Taguchi H20 10 'doing collaborative
deconstruction as an "exorbitant" strategy in
qualitative research. Re-conceptualising
educational research methodology
one(1) : 41--53
Palmer, A (2011) how many sums can I do?
Performative strategies and diffractive thinking
has methodological tools for rethinking
mathematical subjectivity. Reconceptualising
educational research methodology 1(1)
3--18